Google are constantly changing their search algorithm ensuring that sites providing the best user experience appear at the top of the organic listings. Good content is key, backed up by relevant and authoritative inbound links. Obviously this is an over simplification and in fact there are at least two hundred boxes that need ticking to give your site every chance of appearing at the top of Google, but up until now site speed has not been one of them.

Google made us aware about a year ago that this metric would be added into their algorithm which was further backed up by them adding site performance into webmaster tools which shows how fast your site is compared to other sites. But they have recently made an official announcement on the Google Webmaster Central Blog that they are now including it in their search ranking algorithm.

There is a link within the site performance section of the webmaster tools to a Mozilla Firefox Plugin called Page Speed. Of course this isn’t the only tool available to measure site speed but it is the one that google are recommending and if you click on the help button it takes you to Googles help page so it would be fair to assume that this has been developed by them and as they are the ones that control the algorithm that this is a good tool for the job.

The loading speed of a site has always been important. In the days of dial up connections it was particularly relevant but with the advent of broadband it has been overlooked to a certain extent. But it should be remembered the speed of connections vary enormously especially between cities and the countryside and as more people are using mobile devices to access the web it is once again of the utmost relevance as anyone will know who has tried to access a slow site in an area without a 3G connection. If you combine this with the fact that the speed of your site may well cause you to drop down the search engine rankings then now is the time to optimise the speed of your website.

So don’t wait until your rankings drop because it will take you months to regain them if at all! If you would like any help with increasing the speed of your site then just contact us and we will be happy to help.

“Computers Increase Productivity and Save Time”       – but do they?

Computers and the internet are the great white hope of the 21st century, without them where would we be? There’s no doubt they can save time and increase productivity and that certainly used to be the case before the advent of the internet when your only possibility of distraction was a sneaky game of Freecell.

Well things have moved on a bit since then and we now have the wonderful world of the internet. Yes it can be a very useful tool and there is no doubt that the ease of accessing information saves you a lot of time. Whereas I used to have to scour hardcore programming manuals to find the solution to a problem, I can now pop my query into a search engine and 90% of the time it will produce the results I need. Failing that the fall back is to post my problem on one of the myriad of forums to be found on the web and geeks are falling over themselves to provide me with a solution.

But for the time I can save, I can find 101 new ways to waste it and I’m not just talking about playing games and randomly browsing. Yes that is a problem especially when you work in an environment like us where a big part of our job is keeping up on the latest web trends via seo sites and blogs and completing indepth keyword and competitor analysis where each hyperlink clicked can take you off on a tangent. But recently I have noticed I am spending more and more time being distracted by work related tools such as:

• Incoming Emails (Genuine and Spam!)
• MSN Messenger
• Business Forums
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)
• Calendars and Task Managers

Office Based ADHD

My average day starts with sitting down at my PC with a much needed bucket of caffeine, checking and responding to my emails. Then I do my daily rounds on the business forums. We find these exceptionally useful, allowing us to learn in areas that aren’t our speciality, whilst allowing us to impart our knowledge in areas that are. This creates a community where everyone benefits and provides us with increased website traffic and more business enquiries. Once I’ve dragged myself away, a quick check of my email is required again – ‘oh dear a few new ones – best refill the caffeine bucket!’.

Armed with a freshly filled bucket its time to log into Remember The Milk and see what I have planned for the day. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Remember The Milk it is a free online task manager and although I am discussing it here, it does actually help me plan my day effectively (just don’t get too anal about inputting every little task!)

Well it’s half an hour later and I’m back again, writing this blog…

Let me explain, whilst checking the hyperlink above to Remember The Milk, I noticed you can also integrate it with Google Calendar, GMail, Firefox and Twitter. Whilst integrating it with GMail I obviously had to check my personal emails and also to integrate it I had to enable something on GMail Labs which has countless timesaving (or are they timewasting?) devices you can integrate with GMail – I managed to avoid those for today, but rest assured, I’ve scheduled them in Remember The Milk for another day. Thank God I haven’t got an iphone, the app for that looks brilliant!

Right, what was I saying? (Sorry must have got distracted again!)

Just had a chat with someone on MSN Messenger which then necessitated me sending an email. I had closed Outlook down to avoid distraction, but as soon as you do, you can guarantee you’ll need to send an urgent email. Of course, once opened, it would be rude not to respond to the new emails that have arrived. So as you can see I have been busy working all morning, time for a break I think and then I need to Tweet about this blog and do all our social media bookmarking – no rest for the wicked. Let me leave you with an interesting article my mate emailed me the other day about social media statistics. Yes, it distracted me but then it was work related!

That reminds me I must go and check Facebook and have a look at YouTube over lunch. Hey ‘all work and no play…..’

So Microsoft are trying to change the world again with their new search platform Bing. Apparently it isn’t a search engine anymore it is a ‘decision engine’ so is this offering anything new or are they just trying to reinvent the wheel.

Over the years search is not something that Microsoft have done well and I wonder who is more worried – Microsoft on hearing the news that Google will soon be releasing an operating system Chrome OS or Google when they saw Bing.

At first sight bing has a nice clean interface and I’m sure the use of images will have people setting it to their homepage to see what image they are displaying today, but what is under the hood. Ultimately the success of a search engine is down to the search algorithm and the results it produces which is why Google has such a huge market share (81.22%). Where others put monetisation above results, Google put results above monetisation and stole the market. More recently google have become more and more of a corporate machine and I would suggest that the quality of the search results have suffered leaving the way for other companies to reclaim some of the market share.

I have only just started to use bling and only when I remember to use it, but most of the time I will still type my search into the google toolbar I have installed. Google will be a hard habit to break but the proof is in the eating as they say so why not use this comparison site for a bit, which brings up the results side by side and decide for yourself.

One thing you can be sure of is that anything that keeps Google ‘on their toes’ can only be good for the end user and Microsoft with their huge advertising budget will do that. Microsoft have extensive knowledge in usability and Google have extensive knowledge in search algorithms but the difference between these two is that the first is transparent and the second a closely guarded secret, so whilst microsoft continue to try and make Bing peoples default search engine by its interface and good usability Google will continue to improve their algorithm and then as Microsoft launch new functionality Google will just pick the bits they want and apply them to their search engine.

We also have to ask the question – why Bing? A quick look at the dictionary reveals:

Bing – a heap or pile
Bling – flashy; ostentatious; glitzy

So you decide is Bing just a bing of s***e or just a bit of bling or is it something that can truely challenge Google.

One more dictionary definition for you comes from the urban dictionary.

Enough said I think.